


silence is the blood whose flesh is singing

by ashleykay



Category: Anne with an E (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Denial, F/M, Soulmate-Identifying Timers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-18
Updated: 2018-08-18
Packaged: 2019-06-29 02:46:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,594
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15720396
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ashleykay/pseuds/ashleykay
Summary: Anne Shirley does not believe in soulmates. And she will not be swayed otherwise. She believes only in love freely given.Soulmate AU. Timers.





	silence is the blood whose flesh is singing

**Author's Note:**

> poem and titles by ee cummings- enter no(silence is the blood whose flesh is singing)
> 
> if you have a tumblr feel free to add me at gilblythofavonlea

~ **dead leaf stirring makes a crash** ~

 

Anne Shirley did not believe in soul mates. Once, a long time ago, when she was small and naive she had. She had possessed a flighty romantic heart. She use to dream in golden sunsets and blooming great flowers that reached like hands toward heaven.

 

But she was no longer a child. The timer imprinted on her wrist she assumed was still counting down, but she did not look at it. She chose instead to cover the lowering numbers with a thick black ribbon and pretend her hardest it did not exist.

 

The other girls in the school wore little white, almost see through, clothes over theirs. Flicking their wrists as they talked. Sometimes, without meaning to, she could see the light numbers counting backwards. It made her feel sorry for them. They were silly girls caught up in silly dreams. And Anne Shirley was many things but she was not silly. She saved her impossible dreams for other things. She dreamed of having dark hair and plumb lips. She dreamed of gardens and she dreamed of the sea. The wide vast sea, where she could travel always and never be in the same place twice.

 

Even her beloved Diana giggled on about soulmates and what they would look like, what they would do. But Anne never did, for all her talk of beauty, she never participated in those twittering discussion of love.

 

She had seen real soulmates. Had lived among them and seen with her own eyes that blinking clocks knew nothing about love. Mr. Hammond was still mean and a brute. He had still beat his wife, his children and even her and the soft lighted time did not make that better. Mrs. Hammond still wept and became hateful. Love was not to be determined by time, no matter what anyone said. She had read any scientific journal she was allowed, poured over each word, so much so she could recite what she read. They all said the same thing, the beginning of the timer's went further back than could be remembered. That all the tests done in the new age had lead to the same known conclusion; that they were to help find our matches.

Anne scoffed at the idea and thought real romance was in the not knowing. But in finding and failing and living. The timers to everyone were about love. Anne secretly thought they were about loneliness. About ending it. The timers could not really be about love but about people. And the need to find an order to follow. That they did not have to suffer heartbreak or failure of wasting time. But Anne did not want to follow, she had the desire to stumble and find what she wanted and what she did not through living. She wanted to remain free. To have herself. To never be held caged by time and love that did not feel like love but a trap around her throat. There had, she thought, to be more to love than a shared beating number.

 

Anne knew about love that was defied by a clock, she had lived with the other small children who were sent away, children born out of non soulmates. Lops they were called and Anne had no idea if she was one of those too. She could not remember her own parents. Did not know if those numbers had beat in synced time. She did not know where she came from, did not really know love at all.

 

So by the time Anne had turned nine she had taken the darkest scrap of ribbon she could find and wrapped it around the clock and refused to look at it. She would not be distracted by fate. She would not be loved because she must be. She would be loved for only herself or not at all.

 

She felt the itch on her left wrist where the ribbon was tied. Sometimes it was as if she could hear the ticking.

 

She snatched her fingers away. She had a wild angry thought, if she could she would cut the timer from her arm. She would toss it away. She would not be kept by predestined love. She would not allow the unknown to trap her and keep her.

 

She reached up roughly and pulled the knot tighter. She would never look. Never know. Because she was not going to let her life be made by anyone but her.

 

 

~ **gently descend** ~

 

She meets Gilbert for the first time while she lays on the cold ground. Billy's form growing distant as he scurried away. There are leaves sticking to her back and dead grass tangled in her hair. Her palm is scratched and sore from the fall.

 

But when she looks up, there he is. His mouth tilted and his eyes are so bright that she thinks it might rival looking into the sun.

 

She fears that if she were to rip at the black cover on her wrist she'd see only zeros. She feels it like an arrow on her soul.

 

Instead she builds a fortress around her heart. She does not want a soulmate. She does not want whatever shines in his eyes. She has heard it said that one must look away from the sun, so she shall. Her gaze drops and she ignores the hand trying to help pull her up. She has no use for touch or knowing. She will not let her eye catch his left wrist.

 

She simply gets up and straightens her back. The fortress strengthens, and she swallows down any romantic notions that hounded her so long ago.

 

She was not giving in to pretty dreams anymore. It was to lonely to hold them and they had ceased to keep her warm.

 

She brushes past him with her chin held high and her eyes never looking back, she would not be turned to salt for a boy. Even if the boy had eyes that made her think of the sea and freedom.

 

But he follows her. She can hear the crunching of the earth beneath them. She can smell the unsettled dirt and she wants to cry. It felt so full inside her. He is calling to her. But she keeps moving, she never knew she was so empty, to be so full.

 

He rushes in front of her and pulls the door open, he is looking at her like he can see everything in her. That the darkest, most terrible parts of her are sitting open in the air bared to this stranger's eyes.

 

“Who are you?” He says it low, his voice scratchy and warm.

 

She could say her name. She could look him in the eyes and say anything.

 

She chooses to look at the ground and she refuses to say what she should. “No one. I am no one.”

 

“Yes-”  


“Are we going to linger all day? Would it be better to start the school day based on what works best for the two of you?” Mr. Phillips calls out to them.

 

He turns and she runs from him. When she finally sits it's next to Lottie, two seats in front of Diana and her usual seat. But she knew there was only one open seat on the boy's side, next to Charlie Sloane. And she needs to be as far away as she can. She would not let anyone stand in front of her education. Not love or hate or Mr. Phillips. And most especially not a boy she did not know.

 

Lottie looked at her side long and she felt the red rising to her cheeks. She felt to raw for this. She willed herself to stare straight ahead. She concentrated on the curl of Mr. Phillips ridiculous mustache. Anything but the way she felt out of sorts.

 

But she could not shake the feeling of his eyes on her. His breathing as if he was standing next to her. Her fingers clenched on the edge of the desk. She felt the ribbon scrap against the wood.

 

This is not what she wanted. Not what she had hoped.

 

But then, maybe it was all in her head. That all the talk at lunchtime over watery pails, had gotten to her. She was slipping back into naivety.

 

She would not allow it. She was stronger than this.

 

She felt the tension leave her body. Her shoulders fell and sagged. It was all a trick her mind was playing. She had been thinking to much lately. Had been dreaming of the asylum and the Hammonds. She was allowing the fear to overcome good sense. For her there was no one but herself. She was determined that she would be her own soulmate.

 

Yes, she thought ferociously, she would answer only to herself. She would find freedom with in herself. She would never belong to anyone but Anne.

 

~ **autumn has gone** ~

 

He will not leave her alone. Not just her physical self but also he plays in her mind. He is there when she wakes and he is there as she sleeps, gliding in and out of her dreams.

 

But the worst is the way everywhere she is so to is he. On her walks to school. Standing outside the schoolhouse doors before they go in. Waiting for her as they gather up their belongings before going home She can feel him as she works on her reader or tallying up numbers on her slate, his eyes glide over her. He is there. And she knows.

 

But she does not yield. Every time he moves close she stumbles further away. He is here now, peering at her from the creek as she eats in silence near the woods. She has taken to lunching alone and far way from the chattering of the other girls.

 

Ruby had cornered her one day and whispered that someone had told her that Gilbert's time had stopped when he had met Anne. It had made Anne want to cry. This is not what she wanted at all. Anne had simply laughed and told Ruby that she was being ridiculous.

 

But she could tell when they looked at her they saw the truth. And Anne would not be found out. She missed her Diana, but it was a worthy sacrifice.

 

So here she sat, legs folded on the cold ground. She was lucky because the autumn had decided to linger and despite the chill in the air it seemed winter would be making a late appearance. She did so love the fall, the trees shifting and living and dying all in one. The warm colors and cool air. Yes she loved the flowers that would come in Spring. She admired the struggle of them as they rose from the ground. She had affinity for those wonderful living flowers. But she felt like she was the autumn. If she were a season she would be this one. Not a time for becoming and growing but one for changing. One for the moments before sleep when you were a little wild and tired.

 

“Anne?” She startled back.

 

It was Gilbert. He looked so solemn. Diana had told her about his sick father. And she was not a unfeeling person. But she was a fearful one.

 

“Yes?” She would not be cruel but she would have to pretend. “Fine day isn't it. Just cool enough to awaken you but still warm enough to stay outdoors.”

 

“Yes I love autumn the best.” He was moving as if he were a trainer and she a wild horse. Slowly. With a steady hand.

 

“I am partial to spring myself.” She ignored her earlier thoughts. It was better to show him that she was not like him, that she was not for him. “How are you?” She said it like Marilla taught her, with just enough friendliness that she would not be questioned but enough distance that it would put a halt to more conversation.

 

“Good.” He sat next her, but not looking her way. “I must be honest, I am inclined to believe it good because you have decided to speak to me.”

 

Her cheeks burned. But she to looked forward. “I am sorry for that. But you see, I am wary of boys. The ones here have been, not quite welcoming to me. I am sure you are different. But you must notice, I tend to spend most time by myself. I do so prefer to think alone, it is better, you know, for the imagination. It is very rude to daydream in the presence of others.”

 

“I wouldn't mind.” Now she can tell he is looking at her. “I would't mind if you kept on imagining with me here, even if we were talking or we can be sitting and dreaming together.”

 

It was enough to make her bolt, but terribly she could not get up. “Oh.”

 

His hand inched closer to the hand of hers that was on the ground. “Anne-”  


“I do not subscribe to the notion of soulmates.”

 

“What?”

 

“I do not look at the timer. I have it tied in a dark ribbon.” She holds it up and the strings on the ribbon are frayed and but it is black and fathomless. “I haven't looked at the timer in years. I don't believe in belonging to anyone. I must belong to only myself and my own dreams.”

 

He nods and does not argue with her. He does not ask her why.

 

But she feels must tell him. “I have seen how some soulmates are. It may be a sign of destiny, but it is not a sign of love. Of feeling. I do not believe in fate. Not where my heart and life are concerned. I am to wild to be controlled.”

 

Again he nodded but there was something in it that was close to understanding. “And you think a soulmate would cage you.”

 

“If you hadn't noticed, women are not taught it is okay to be,” she tried to think of the right word, “independent and on their own. They are sometimes little more than property. To be bought with promises and weddings and then left to decorate and bare children and to live as well as a carpet or lamp or anything else that is bought because it is pretty. I do not want that, I want to be all the things and none of the things in the world. I will not be held back.”

 

“Don't you think, that if they really loved you, they wouldn't ask you to be anything but what you are?”

 

She did not want this. “I think that soulmates are a lie. And one I can not participate in.”

 

“Right.” His finger twitched close to hers. “If it isn't what you want. Then it isn't.”

 

She raised an eyebrow and looked at him as if it was the first time, “Most don't react like that.”  


“How do they?” She still wasn't looking towards him.

 

“They ask me about the other person on the side of the timer. If I mind that it will hurt them.”

 

“Do you?”

 

She watched a leaf fall and shivered. “I do not want to hurt anyone. I would not cause pain if it could be helped. But,” she swallowed around the lump in her throat, “at what expense. Should I go up to that soulmate and tell him or her that I don't want them? That I can not. Or do I go with them. And whither because of being unhappy. I am a wild thing, Gilbert. We do not do well in captivity. And I think that to be fair, it must be a hurt all at once, than cause a suffering that lasts much to long.”

 

“Yes, I can see that. What if he would love you anyway?” He turned to watch the swirl of leaves dancing on the bottom of the trunks.

 

“How could he? He doesn't even know me. This is what I mean. How can it be love if there is no knowing. It is not enough for me, just seeing numbers. I want to be wanted because I am plain little Anne. For my passions and failures. It would not do me to be loved for zeros and lights just because it should be so. I want to be loved by choice.”

 

This he does not answer. But she can see the truth blooming like a sunrise on his face. Love shouldn't be a given, but it should be gave like a gift, like a hand in another hand. 

 

~ **oh come terrible anonymity** ~

 

Gilbert Blythe still follows her. But now it is beside her. Their arms bumping along the way. They talk about the Mathematics exam and the farm animals, and he makes fun of her for naming the chickens, and then weeping when they are eaten.

 

She giggles when he tells her of his terrible luck at being a farmer. His lines in the fields are always just shy of straight. And he is a little unhappy at the whole thing. She gives his arm a pat when he tells her it is for the best that he has chosen to become a doctor.

 

They are friends. They share an easy, happy way of being together that is new to Anne.

 

“ I got you something.” He stops suddenly on the little road under the White Way of Delight. His fingers are curled around it. And they brush her palm as he places a new dark ribbon in her hand. “Your cover is getting frayed and I didn't want it to fall apart. I know that you don't want to see-”

 

“This is wonderful.” She grins at him and ignores the tinge of sadness that she can not explain. “It will be so perfect. Although dark colors always seem to make me look so much more pale. I would give anything for my skin to be creamy shade or even pink. But I am such a color that I have heard myself called translucent.”

 

His fingers are still close to her palm. He is so warm. And the snow has just began. She wants suddenly for his hand to be in hers.

 

“How do you go about putting it on? You know without looking at it.” He is so close now, his breath tickling her cheek.

 

“I usually have Marilla help me. And at the asylum, I simply never took it off.”

 

“I can help you, Anne.” It is an intimate thing for another person to see a timer. But the thought of Gilbert touching her wrist and unwrapping it like a gift causes her heart to lurch. She feels flushed and strange thinking of it. So she does not speak but nods.

 

His fingers work slowly. And she should look away. But she is caught up in looking at his nimble hands work.

 

Her breath catches as he undoes the tight knot. “You should not tie it so tight. You'll cut the circulation of from your fingers. It would not do for you to lose them. How will you beat me at school then?” She does not look at his face but knows he must be grinning.

 

She turns as he ribbon falls. He makes no sound as he uses the new cloth to recover her wrist. But she feels like crying. Like everything is to much to bare.

 

“There you go, Anne. All done.” His fingers are still touching the spot right below the timer. When she looks up at him, his face is tinged red and his eyes are so bright, she can see the whole world in them.

 

“Thank you, Gil.” She moves her hand till her palm is touching his. Till they are having a holy palmer's kiss. And then, just then she wants to stand on her toes and kiss the soft corner of his mouth. To tell him of the things inside her.

 

But she does not. She can not. Instead they walk home hand in hand.

 

**~absolute peace~**

 

Now she is everywhere he is. She sinks into his presence almost like a shadow. She hates it, it is everything she has never wanted, and it feels like a betrayal to herself.

 

She wants freedom and herself. But, somewhere along the way, she began to think that being with only herself would become impossibly lonely. And she is so tired of being lonely.

 

“Do you want to fall in love?” He asks her as they cross the Miller bridge. It is a bright spring day. There are birds singing and the flowers have burst past being buds to large blooms. The smell around them is heavy and warm and sweet.

 

“I did not think so.” She is seventeen now. Older than when they meet of course, but younger in some distant other way. “I use to believe that love was a fallacy that people told themselves to stop from being alone.”

 

“Do you not think that Matthew and Marilla and Diana love you?” They stand on the middle of the bridge as the sun shines high and hot in the sky.

 

“Yes. Well, no, I suppose at first I did not. I thought that they may like me. But I had not thought, well I suppose, I could not imagine that I would be loved.”

 

“That's rather ridiculous. Who would not love Anne?”

 

She knows it is not the sun that is burning her cheeks. “It is different though, isn't it? Their love and what you are talking about?”  


“Isn't love, love?” His hand is almost covering hers as they rest against the railing. She wishes for him to take it.

 

“Yes, I would say it is, only,” she stops herself from moving closer. “it is different, the way they feel for me, and what I think you are saying without saying.”

 

“Anne-”

 

“No,” she struggles to speak, “no, I am not angry. Or upset. No not at all. I am- I don't know, Gil. I am fine with the question. We are quite a bit older now. Aren't we?” She tries to catch her breath, to hold back the words that want to fly out of her mouth. “I did not believe in love, because I never saw it before. Never really had it before. It was easier to be angry at it than to crave it. Because then I would not ache for something that felt so far out of reach. A person can only stretch so far for the moon before they come to realize it is impossible. I could not deal with more impossible things. So yes, or no, I did not think that the Cuthburts or Diana could love me. Because I did not know I could be loved.”

 

Now he reaches to her hand, pulls it to his lips to kiss the tips of each finger. “And now?”  


“I hope I could be loved. The way you mean.”

 

“Will you check the time?”

 

She has asked her self the same thing. Will she check and what will it say. Will it be synced to Gil? Who her heart loves so dearly that she can not imagine being without him. Will it still be counting down? Could she live with any disappointment.

 

She fears she is not strong enough.

 

“I...I don't know. I would like to say yes. But I am afraid of what I will say.” She runs her the fingers of her right hand over his jaw. “What if it is not what I want? How could I bare it?” She is sore from the aching.

 

“Then don't take it off.” His hands slide from her fingers to her wrist pausing to touch lightly her covered timer, till his one hand rests on her hip and the other on her waist.

 

“What about you, Gil? Do you not want to know what it says?”

 

“I don't care. I have no need for numbers or timers. I know. I know very much the answer. I have always known.”

 

“Because you looked.”

 

“I didn't. I didn't make it a habit, even back then to look at it. It was just a thing. But you were, even from the first time I saw you, everything. I did not love you then. But I do now. We could look, if you want to. We can see if they sync. But I know. I have known always, even when I didn't. Do you not feel it too?”

 

She was going to cry. She already could feel the tears overwhelming her eyes. “I have always felt it. I have always known.”

 

“Without looking?”  


She nodded as he pulls her closer. “Me too. Oh, Anne. I have never loved as I love you. I wish I could make you a poem or beautiful speech worthy of that love. But I have only myself to give.”

 

She choked. And shook her head. “I do not need words. For I have the feeling of it. I can not, no matter how I try, get away from it.”

 

“Do you want to, to get away from it, from me?”

 

Her shirt was wet now from her tears. “Sometimes. Oh, do not think it is because I hate you. I could not. But, I am afraid of loosing myself to you. I have never-”  


“I would never ask you to be anything but my partner, my own Anne. To walk with me and wherever we go,  we will just alongside each other. I do not want a decoration or someone who will only bare children. Do you not see Anne? That I want someone to come home to, someone who will come home to me. I want to laugh and love and live for each other. For ourselves. It does not matter to me what you do. If you should write books. Or wander all day in fields or gardens. I will not hold you to me. I won't bind you. I only want to learn to fly with you. To have you choose to come to me. As I choose to go to you. We are not forced by numbers to love. But by are desire to love. And I only desire to love you.”

 

Yes, she thought, yes she nodded. Yes as she kissed his babbling mouth and his shaking hands. Always a yes. She could be true to herself, to Anne. And have him to. She could carve out the timer and it would never matter. Because only she did and he did. It was only them together, that mattered. And no time could change or make that so.

 

He laughed as he kissed her.

 

She tilted her head back and laughed to.

 

This was better than the soulmate love stories that came in the lady's magazines. It was not a meeting by chance or love that was easy. It was better and real and hers. He loved Anne. Loved her for her faults and silliness and she, she loved him. She loved her Gil, not because she must but because she could not love anyone but him. His love was given like a gift to her. And she was greedy and she had to take it, to never give it up.

 

And to give her love back to him.

 

It was a choice and a gift and she would overflow with it.

 

And when he kissed her, the black ribbon still tightly covering her wrist, she could only think of the glorious possibilities.

 


End file.
